


First, Do No Harm

by Chaifootsteps



Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Eye Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, I'm tagging this as a ship and it's meant to be but it could just as easily not be?, M/M, SkekSil and skekTek are complicated., SkekSil comes and Makes All Better a situation that is entirely his actual goddamn fault.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 05:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20652158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaifootsteps/pseuds/Chaifootsteps
Summary: SkekTek is fresh off his encounter with the peeper beetle. SkekSil plays nurse.





	First, Do No Harm

Getting the peeper beetle off was always the least fun part.

But of course, it had to be done; a blinded scientist was no good to anyone. Around the time the beetle's mandibles ceased their tell-tale circular chewing motions, the Emperor gave the signal, and the Ritual-Master produced a pair of long, silver gleaming tongs. Just a quick grasp behind the head, a great deal of flailing and screeching, and as always, the other Skeksis making the not insensible decision to scramble back en masse. But a marginally fuller beetle was a marginally slower beetle (even if _it_ would have preferred another 20 minutes in which to eat the other eye and start in on the sinuses), and all things considered, it was popped back into its crystal prison with a minimum of fuss.

SkekTek's's screams had ceased some minutes ago (abrupt, eerie, as though he'd suddenly run out of them), and in their place, he'd taken up a nonstop stream of faint, wordless, haunted muttering. He swayed in place, remaining eye gazing on ahead without actually seeing, knees buckling dangerously where he stood. He seemed quite heedless to the gore running down his face.

SkekZok raised a hand high. “The Scientist's debt to his kind...is paid! Let him step forward without further castigation!”

A cheer rippled through the throng of Skeksis, perhaps not quite as enthusiastic as the ones that had preceded the show. SkekOk and skekLach stepped forth once again to lift the cage from skekTek's shoulders, and as they did, his knees at last failed him.

The Emperor chuckled at this. SkekSil did not.

SkekAyuk and SkekVar assumed the task of lifting the scientist beneath the arms (the former taking special pains to lean away from his head), and in a gruesome procession, followed SkekZok out of the throne room, down a bend in the hallway, and into the ceremonial side chamber kept purely for Skeksis coming off the end of their corporal punishments; soft, quiet, adorned in various deep blues, and unlike the rituals that led up to it, entirely without teeth. After all, no Skeksis anywhere ever deserved a half-measure – only the harshest punishments, and once they'd been served, the very plushest of recovery rooms. If it had been anyone else meeting the beetle today, skekTek would have been on hand to touch up and disinfect.

They lay him down on the single bed, still muttering brokenly. SkekZok draped the ruined side of his face in a clean towel, and lay another beneath his head to soak up any residual seepage.

“Rest now,” he ordered, not unkindly. “Leave it all to the past.”

And there they left him.

* * *

It was scarce touching on an hour later when SkekSil crept into the recovery chamber with covered basket in hand, furtive glances about more a force of habit than precaution – there was no rule _against_ visitors, and indeed, it was common for friends to bring you water and rib you good naturedly about your screams. When skekAyuk faced the Needler after that infamous castle-wide bout of food poisoning, skekEkt was by his side with ointments and nuzzling, and when skekLach got his feet lashed, he received no shortage of visitors in awe of the creative curses he'd strung together. If memory served, they'd brought him his favorite drink.

Of course, all of this assumed you had friends. SkekTek did not.

SkekTek was still shaking. SkekTek was still whimpering.

“No,” he choked, the dryness in his throat rough against the air. “_No more! Please, mercy, no more!_”

“Hush,” skekSil soothed. “Is only me.”

This did nothing to soothe the injured Scientist. SkekSil couldn't imagine why.

“No! _No!_” He rose up onto his shoulders as though ready to fight, the bloodied towel falling to the floor. “Get out! _Get away from me!_”

“Shh, hush, hush now! I bring water, medicine, help with pain! Let Chamberlain help now. We talk about rest later. Yes? Good?” Whether out of agreement or simply because his outburst had taken more from him than he had, skekTek quieted, falling back against the pillow with an agonized groan. Mostly, it just sounded like defeat. SkekSil would take it. “There, yes. Good.”

The basket, along with an assortment of smaller items, contained two prominent jugs; one steaming, one not. When he raised the latter to skekTek's beak, the Scientist shrank back from the sight of anything nearing his face, shrieking the way he did when they put the cage on him. “Is just water! Only water! Special cold. You need it very badly, yes?” He shifted position, inching further into skekTek's line of vision, and that seemed to do the trick, for the Scientist drank greedily and without question, all the usual concerns the Chamberlain and an open container would raise muted by pain and thirst. He swallowed it down to the last third and licked the rim like a nursing nebrie, settling back with a sigh. His whimpers had run their course, it seemed. The remorseless shaking of his body, not so much.

“Good. Yes. Now.” Setting the jug aside, skekSil drew forth a miniature wooden box, carefully laid with perscriptive etchings. Inside lay four dark berries, fat as little plums and smelling like a riverbank. He held them up so that skekTek's eye could roam them, verifying ahead of time what he clarified next. “Just kifkir berries. Help Scientist sleep, no pain, no dreams. ”

SkekTek took them with trembling talons, chewing and chewing to release their dry-sour juices and speed up their effects, which were rapid. By the time skekSil had taken up a rag from his basket and wet it with the hot water, skekTek was visibly relaxing, breathing easing, all frantic edges loosening their death grip on him.

“I clean face now?”

“...Fine.”

He worked gently, sponging at the blood and dried vitreous fluid caked to the Scientist's cheek and jaw, keeping clear of the raw and exposed socket itself; peeper beetle saliva was mildly antiseptic, it would hardly go gangrenous anytime soon. He began to talk, unable to not. “Feels much worse than looks. Beetle is fast, clean, no injured bits and pieces deep down in workings of eye. Scientist is genius. Will make new eye, better than old. Will still be able to take in light from the Crystal.”

“Stop,” skekTek ordered. His words already taking on a hint of a slur. “_You_ don't get to tell me that.”

“Okay,” skekSil agreed pleasantly. And he did not.

Kifkir berries were a bit of a miracle drug, Thra's favorite go-to for minor surgery; powerful and yet so gentle that Podlings would sometimes give them to their babies. SkekSil had taken them himself once, back when several of his teeth had abscessed, and skekTek himself had done the draining and pulling. He had a fuzzy recollection of seeing the scalpel in the Scientist's hand, viewed from beneath what seemed a veil of warm, painless, cozy niceness, and then the next thing he knew, he was waking up hours later, the single sheet thrown over him feeling softer and safer than it could ever hope to be back in the unmedicated world. As SkekSil ducked to tuck the sodden, reddened rag away, he was a little surprised to hear skekTek speaking up at all.

“You're a parasite.”

“Hm?”

SkekTek's head lolled, watching him through lids that struggled valiantly to remain open. “Did this to me...would take the other eye if you could...”

“Oh no, never. Why would Chamberlain do such a thing? SkekTek has such lovely eyes.” He tapped the edge of his beak thoughtfully. “If you wish to know honest truth, thought Emperor would dangle tail. Maybe,_ maybe_ cut off claw.”

“Better...mine than yours...of course.” SkekSil almost laughed, to be threatened in a voice more akin to a sleepy Podling than anything. Almost. SkekSil rarely laughed aloud. “You're wretched.”

“Little bit.” He tilted his head, taking in the macabre sight of the Scientist without flinching, observing in his careful, careful way. As always, weighing his words.“Would not be here if it were any other Skeksis.”

SkekTek croaked out what may have been an attempt at derisive laughter, was probably derisive laughter, but could just as easily have been a cough, and in any case, did not try again. Both eye and socket were closed now, all trembling stilled. SkekSil waited for him to speak again, to shift, and when he did not, began to rise from the bedside.

“...Blanket.”

SkekSil paused.

“Hmm?” SkekTek had been given one blanket, and it was a nice one. “Something is wrong with Scientist's blanket?”

“...'nother.”

“Oh! Of course.” Off he trundled to the cabinet, finding it stuffed with extra sheets, blankets, pillows, and for some odd reason, a box of dice. He gathered down a spare coverlet and spread it over the Scientist, helpfully stooping to replace his tail when it dropped listlessly to the floor (“Oops!”), and after a moment's consideration, lingered to tuck the edges in around his neck. “There. All is good now?”

SkekTek gave no reply, curling faintly into the new source of warmth. The Chamberlain watched, waited, passed the point of reasonable doubt that his colleague was well and truly lost to the world...and then, watched for just a little longer. If there was one thing SkekSil excelled, had always excelled at perhaps even beyond speaking, it was quietly watching.

With his face clean and both eyes closed, skekTek looked unchanged from the picture he'd made just three hours ago. Kifkir berry induced sleep was, indeed, dreamless, and there was no chance the peeper beetle would be visiting his unconscious mind to haunt him. It was an easy thing to look at, skekTek small beneath the blankets, beak gently parted, breaths so slow and measured...and for the first time all day, at peace.

Finally, as soundlessly as possible, skekSil gathered his things, secure in his certainty that there would be no other visitors, that the Emperor's respect for the old rituals would keep him from the chamber until the next Ceremony of the Sun, at the very least. The beetle would go back into its locked cabinet along with all the other frightening things skekZok so lovingly kept. The Podlings would clean the spilled blood and fluid from the castle floor and that would be the end of that. He couldn't even say for certain that skekTek, wracked with shock, would remember this little interlude, although his line of reasoning going into this had been that he would.

And if he didn't...

Well, then that would just be for skekSil to contemplate, now wouldn't it?

One last pause, hand resting on the door. One last look at skekTek, fast asleep.

SkekSil smiled.

“Good night, Scientist.”


End file.
